Afghan debate: the realities

The bipartisan support for our Afghanistan involvement expressed in the parliamentary debate reveals two sickening foreign policy failures by both major parties.

First is our lingering and unquestioning knee-jerk adherence to the United States alliance that resulted in Australia intervening in Afghanistan more than nine years ago without any proper parliamentary investigation, debate or consultation with the Australian people. The result: 21 soldiers dead, and rising, and no adequately reasoned justification so far for such deaths above blind adherence to president
George Bush
’s (at that time) vague election-driven war on terrorism in response to the September 11, 2001, series of co-ordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda on the US. Second is the stunning ignorance of our politicians and defence chiefs as to the realities of the Afghan conflict. The Taliban are not al-Qaeda. The latter are fighting a global guerilla war with no fixed geographical bases necessary, whereas the Taliban are fighting for Afghan sovereignty and a fundamentalist Islamic regime, not too unlike Saudi Arabia, a US ally.

In short, the Taliban are fighting for an Islamic way of life for their country, not an attack on America. While Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
and Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
proclaim we are fighting for our security, this can’t be achieved by trying to impose Western political and secular values on a fundamentally Islamic people via propping up a corrupt regime composed of drug trade-funded warlords. You cannot crush ideological shadows with military bulldozers and Western aid. It’s time to withdraw from our new Vietnam as, simply put, Australia and the Taliban are fighting totally ideologically incongruent wars.